Transitional Process
by SeanEscargot
Summary: A renegade Process has betrayed its owners and seeks revenge on the 'Hackours,' a secret society of hackers from Cloudbank, which misappropriated its powers for selfish purposes. Teaming up with a zany cast of humans is the only way to survive. But will they also betray him? Who can be trusted? From the cities and into the country, this is their story. Contains comedic elements.
1. Get Them to the Bastion

Author's Note:

This is the first chapter of my first story. None of the main cast of Transistor are in it yet, but they will show up later, I promise. I will also reference the game Bastion (another Supergiant Games creation from before Transistor) on occasion, but this will not be a crossover, I promise.

Also, some words will have brackets after them due to stylisation like this: Example(). They are also capitalised. This is something the game does to signify an ability that the main character is using and I will continue with that tradition.

Lastly, I am writing in British English. Please don't be offended by this. Don't be shy in voicing opinions, but please no flames.

Start of Chapter() One: Get Them to the Bastion

* * *

We, the future host, Antonym, Jenny D'Angelo and I were walking down the road. The sun was crying and the bombinating sky above us buzzed and except that I wasn't walking, I floated behind and above them.

"Where do we go now?" asked the blonde one. Not too worry about him, he dies soon after-all. In the end we learnt that his dad embezzled money from a beneficial organisation to us so we can forgo pleasantries until then.

"Ikea believe you have no IKEA where to go," she fan boated. "If anyone has the right to be confused it is our guest from Cloudbank" [AN: This isn't an commercial advertisement promulgation for that company. It's just how Jennie communioncates. I don't mean to break website policies here with this.]

As we turned into the back alleys, tuned to a dead channel. I could feel them.

We enter-keyed into the Mardi Gras district where jesters and revellerers were drinking and wearing necklaces made out of beads. Agilitous Beadstealers were flashing people their QRcodes and grabbing and thieving and tearing peoples' bead necklaces. The colourful beads spilled onto the streets and down guttering systems. About 34 in every 79 started to mutate and morph into full-size nanofab men wearing suits and sunglasses. They are but for one out of infinity in attempts to counterterrorise me. The crying continued.

Not everyone noticed what was happening due to inferior human reactionary times and cryers yelling out capitalist propagandist bargain like free desolator recipes in exchange for OVC-mail addresses. Did they not know that all recipies are the same and everyone could access the same identical information if they simple pooled together the same address.

Suddenly, there was an ambrosial commosian and people began to ran away, yet retrospectively, I know everything now as an ever-evolving cyber-being. Bring da rukus; time to keyhole out.

Badass music.

I used Storage() to revert back to my Cell. Ilanded into the arms of my empty human half. I was intergrated. They indeed did not have a Trace. We were whole once again.

The walls of the alley began to shift and twist and fundamentally collapse around us. Two men came out of the distortions, one on each side of us. They both had a gun and a mobile and scarfbandanas that covered their mouths and helmets on top of their heads above and behind us. I expended my energy to get to safety us. We warped through the dismorph gates left behind us. We were safe for now as our passage closed behind us.

Within minutes, I Storage()d into the lights above and causing a temp brownout by lapping in reverse around the electricty cuirciutry, absorbing as much as one I could.

I re-entered them and took complete control of using my energy serges. We stealthed around desks, cubicals and empty halls. All agents must be back in the cities searching for me. They won't find me here in their storm-eye. But stealthsecton I spoke too soon as a single guard whistled down the halls walking slowly away from us. I thoughtbubbled an idea. What if we avoid him entierly? Not a second later and one of the lights between us exploded.

"Uh, oh. SpaghettiOs!" he exclaimed. He span round on his boot heels and spotted us dithering in the hallway. "You! Are you the new we designer? You certainly look like one."

A lady walked up behind him and zapped him with a voltage stunner. She supported her fall down to the fall. She came close to us.

"You a Hackour?"

"No," I scrathed their head. "I'm an ex-Hackour in the body of a Trace-less vessel."

"I'm from Thunder-Squad and I already know everythin' 'bout you." she lied.

A gentleman walked up behind her and zapped the lady with a stunner voltage. He supported her fall right down to the ground. He came close to us.

"I'll handle this imposter." He folded his arms. "I'm a real ThundereR and I have some advice for you. Don't cause blackouts in enemy terrortory moments after triggering a Hackour alarm. I had to break cover for this. No more help after this."

"But," I reprised, "this human I'm residing in has no idea about any of this and too make matters worse -"

Footsteps with almost no gaps between them cut me off. The Thunder member hushed me and became feeling the walls. Multiple people must be running toWASDs us.

"No excuses. No failure. For the glory of Thunder." He pushed us into the wall and we fell through it, leaving him behind. Gunshots rang out as the portal closed.

We continued falling back through the alley where I first fused with the human. Two bodies lay there with the nanofab soldiers crawling over them and up the walls. Shouting was emanate-coming from the roofs of the skyscrapers. We conti'ued to fall until we hit the floor and fell further still right through it.

We wormholed into another district where necklaces mades out of beads were being worn by drinking partygoers. A woman looking like an alacritous Beadthief grabbed meus and ran faster than humanly possible. We were practically Jaunt()ing, but that was impossible. That particular Function was lost the to Datalines over 2.6 years ago. None of the thousands since possessed it. My Eye() could not be wrong about that.

She dragged us through night-time inner-city New Year celebratrions, daylight birdwatching, planespotting and streetpartying and straight into a ground floor apartment's masquerade ball. She Mask()ed which sent the Function into my integrated Cell and resonated into my new body allowing the human to turn invisible with us, no matter how brief.

"Thunder and Glory!" She exclaimed, pushing us through a glitched window. We were transported yet again, but we would be alright without help now as long as the Mask() Function held.

To our horror, we were back in the alley where we started. Most of the nanofab men were felled and melting back to a pre-bead ooze state, leaving behind dinged bullet caselings and caseholes in the walls from the fighting and climbing.

Human bodies were wearing Mardo Grad Dress and slumped in a pile - my horrorfeld human host isn't very chatty right now, but will be next chapter I promise - one was blonde haired and one was wearing aforementio Mardo Gard dress red and sparkLED still in the setting evening sun - which was still crying over the end of the box set by the way - so was Jenny.

Two dew-blue hued cubes flew into view. "Well," Anton vocalised vocable thoughts to me via his Trace, "it's a good thing my dad has the money to fix this."

"Do you want to come along?" I asked. "We can use you."

Jenny began to sentenced, "I don't want to go with Ant-o-nym. I can't Belize he's can be so optimystic-o'-light-at-end-of-tunnel." She aircrafted.

"We must leave the cities before the other Process come," I renegaded. "You won't last an hour without being Poeccessed by ehem without us," I C3P0ed.

"Us?" asked surprised Antonym.

"We survived by integrating."

"OK, Computer," Anton-whym whimsied;

"More like an 'OK album,' Jenny quipped"

I shifted my Cell into the hand my host doesn't write with and transmogrified it into a much betterer and ascended form. It became a pure with white claw qith a huge red eye in the back of hand. I absorbed the two Traces and will never speak of them again.

I forged on to reach a safe place.

We reach the waterfront shortily before night falls. The moon begins to grins.

The Mask() wore off and my host became consciousness incarnegie again. They looked at the back of my hand and - "We need to arrive at the Bastion" I somethinged to cut them off from too much bad thinking, my red eye on their hand glowing as a spoke.

"This is the last time i go chippying" my host Daz4Zoed insode our collective mind. They were 1% processed at this point, so don't blame me for her atomnious dialog. "The Bastion?'

"Yes. All will be fixed when one once we arrive at the Bastion."

* * *

End of Chapter() One.

I have made a few edits to correct misspelt character names since first uploading, but if you see anything else that needs correcting please tell me.


	2. The Boat and the Serpent

This chapter will be slightly different from the last because it's written from a different character's perspective. See if you can tell which one. It is also written in present tense and not past tense like before.

Start of Chapter() Two: The Boat and the Serpent.

* * *

The buildings begin to wave. The reflections on the water are colourless and still. New strange sets of lights form in the sky every few kilo-seconds.

"The Bastion?" I axed? [Still not a crossover.]

"Yes," confined the entity inside my hand. The grass red eye in the claw winks at me as I stare back.

The new Eye() Function available to me now points me in the right direction of a nearby boat on the river floating and still. It points like a compass points to a boat if said boat is directly north of the boat-seeking compass holder. It always points.

"What's a Function?"

"A special ability we can use by absorbing the Traces of people," it replied.

"What's a Trace?"

"We cannot know for certain, but they seem to be linked to a persons' selections," it confirms.

"I don't have any selections," I arms folded looking down with a frowny face on my face.

"The world is soon to be subjected to unrelenting pain. You shouldn't be too sad about the past. You have a function of sorts. Steal the boat up ahead and I will hack into it and navigate to a good final resting place for the night, finally."

After walking along the waterfront for a few minutes, I jump the fence and climb aboard the boat. My new Eye() shows my all kinds of facts relating to it and pretty much anything I can look at. Apparently it's only been used once in the last 255 days, the boat that is. I feel a little better about stealing it.

"What do I do now?"

"Nothing," it replies. "I'll use the first function I was given to force my way in and become a part - one - with the boat. It does mean leaving you behind for awhile."

The world around me stops lighting up and a great visual noise quietened. My hand returns to normal and a white mechanical thing with a great big red eye and translucent oxblood circular barrier is left behind - like an orphan after The Great Wall City Memory Leak of 2029. It begins to float and latch onto the boat controls. The steering stuff becomes white and blocky. The boat powers up, begins to hover above the water and gingivitily moves forward.

"Is that what you did to my body? Did you force me to run away from my friends back when we were attacked just now?"

"Scavengers," it forearms. [Look it up. It's a real verb; 'to forearm'] "Repurposers of technology both old and forgotten; Stealers of artificial intelligences both great and incomprehensibly powerful. They can even swap minds and open portals with those guns of thiers. They mean to steal me, but I will pilot to avoid them."

"What are you talking about? That doesn't answer my question."

"My Eye() sees all," it laughs manically.

"I've really gone down the rabbit hole this time," I murmur to myself.

Suddenly, a great white, giant submarine-like snake rises out of the water. People come out of a hatch on top and begin riding it. Some are duel-wielding strange bulky guns and holler and whoop at me. Others are holding on for their exigent lives by grabbing the red serpent bits as waves splash them right in the goggles.

"Scavengers," it re-forearms. It begins to hum a tuneless tune interspersed with giggling and faux-engine noises.

The boat speeds up and increases its acceleration sporadically even still.

The scavengers shoot what I assume to be mind-swapping beams and portal opening rays. They rays and beams are blocked thankfully by random dolphins that jump out of the water majestically between the two vessels. Some of the people firing start flopping about on the roof of the snake as if they had been exchanged for dolphins in one of those non-existence 'Switch Your Baby for a Dolphin' bakesales. Those don't exist.

The boat speeds away from our enemies and turns sharply at an oxbow or maybe even a meander in the artificial water river. It was made by man. Ahead of us lay some kind of white and red robo-shark. I brace for impact as the boat speeds on.

"There's no knowing if we'll live. Ride the snake to the end!" my insane temporary companion shouts.

"But we aren't on the snake. We're the other people from their perspective."

"We're the other guys? But I hate those guys. The Process and the human."

"What's a -"

We jump the shark.

I open my eyes. It is fine, rolling over in the stream. But then the snake comes along and I close them again. Upon reopening I can see the shark getting eaten by the red-faced serpent's red-coloured serpent mouth's teeth. And I could be next!

The water becomes stained with black lines, the boat and the serpent slow down simultaneously. The more lines spilling out, the more lose of acceleration occurs.

The boat's controls return to normal and the strange program rolls back into ball form, trundles past me, down the boat bits I stand on and falls into the water. The boat comes to a complete stop and I frantically turn dials, bang on panels and push buttons. Nothing works. Looking over my shoulder, I see the serpent gnashing and snarling and coming straight towards me. [This would have made a great opening, but too late for now.]

The serpent basilisks towards me. It basilisks and basilisks without stop or pause.

In the time it takes for a drop of water to hit a malodorous pool of stagnant water, I have an idea. There must be a spare key on-board somewhere. I frantically and futilely search boxes and cabinets, finding nothing but fishing supplies and ironically locked other, smaller boxes.

The serpent relentlessly pushes on, fighting through the black lines of slowing.

In the recorded time a mass vaccination of a herd of cattle takes, I have another brilliant idea. A boat this advanced must be voice-operated. I try many different voices, most too offensive to repeat in front of an audience. My efforts do not bear fruit. It is like throwing seeds into a most unfecund field post-nuclear war and crossing one's ashen mutant fingers. I break down on the boat floor.

The serpent keeps coming and coming until it stops coming. It roars loudly before turning completely white and made out of voxels. It backs up, blinking lights and noises and everything and submerges back below the waves, taking the scavengers with it.

I peer over the side of the boat and see the shielded orb-core of my former kidnapper floating to the surface. I untangle it from the black lines permeating the water and it changes my hand back into a white claw.

"Thank you," I say, still very noticeably panicking.

"It's what I do. Although we need to leave. The Hackours can see me only when we are disintegrated from one another. Or when I steal electrical energy on a scale big enough to cause blackouts."

"And we were just disconnected. And I'm guessing that's why Jenny and Antonym and I were attacked. You came to find me and they noticed you."

"Exactly. You're learning," it remarked.

"Let's go back and look for them. They must be scared in that war-zone. What if they got separated from each other?"

"Oh, I have a feeling they are together somewhere close." It began laughing evilly. My hand was actually opening up a mouth in the palm of my hand and using it to express its malice and pride in being evil vocally. "Also," it added, "they are with the captain of the boat down there. All you need to know is that she had a name. Just like dolphins have names! And her name was Jessant Half-Thursday Quasi-Midnight Pseudo-Tears. And she was one of those goth scavengers."

I gasped like a silver medallist finishing a race, only to be told that my fellow competitors let me win the event due to peer pressure. "Did you kill them? And then eat them? How many more have you killed?"

"It's a terrible name!" it erroneously replied.

* * *

End of Chapter() Two.

Apologies for any mistakes, this is still a work in progress and I will be coming back to edit previous chapters as new ones go up. See you next update!


	3. This Place Wasn't Here Yesterday

This chapter is longer than the last two, sorry for that. The next few will be shorter, hopefully taking less time to write.

This chapter was back to past tense because I thought it was the prettiest way to communicate the ideas I wanted the story to convey.

Start of Chapter() Three: This Place Wasn't Here Yesterday.

* * *

My human host took a right at Socialism, and made great pace from the azure waterways and last hours' dark events and back into whatever city this was. I was still recovering from my serpentine ordeal so I was woozy at the time and don't recall the locales.

"Hello, it's Jenny here, miss me," Jenny aerodynamically fuselaged.

"Hey, it's Antonym here. We saw everything back there and we want you to know that we are still alive. There are many things of import to talk about like ships and kings, but I would wish to say how I would have loved to fish with my butler on that water," he blue-screen techno-echoed, but everyone ignored his as he was unimportant for now. But there will be a coming interregnum where money will rule instead of my nonsense.

"Jenny, it's great to hear you again, so you're not dead?" they asked.

"Well," I started to finally explain, "people have Traces inside them, which is a terrible place to keep important information by the way, and they allow us Process to learn new abilities called Functions. But greedy, powerful individuals can use Process as tools and even weapons to bypass world laws. We must stop them by going places."

"Cool, so when will we get our bods back?" Jenny demandin'ly asked all unchallenging-like, so I muted her.

"When I look up, I only see you and the beautiful backdrop of ocean of stars behind you," Anton said creepily with innocence. To be fair I would also only see that in the eye of the hand without my Eye() Function gathering data for me constantly sometimes.

"Not responding to Jenny's question," they asked.

"No, I muted her," I replied.

"But now I'm all alone," they acknowledged.

"I'm still here," Ant reassured no-one.

"Everything was going smoothly," Jessant (prev chap goth girl) whined, "until you two hacked my refurbished water world Spine, that I captained, and killed everyone aboard, stealing my Trace thing in the resulting drowning."

"To whom am I speaking?" Antonym quizzed.

Later on, which is why that scene break is there, think about it, my living, breathing human decided to go to sleep - but not in the street! As they couldn't return to Cloudbank they wanted to look for an inn in town, but avouched to me that they would accept even a four-star Breakfast and Bed - as long as the price was right.

We asked around at various establishments which were likely to know about places of rest.

We tried the Cuddle Party venue first. We knocked on the door. As we waited, we could hear loud ambient music playing.

"Yeah?" asked the bumble-bee-suited man who opened the door.

"We-"

"Oh, no!" he interrupted with a startle. "You have a claw like that red-headed chick what done those murders here."

"Excuse me?"

He slammed the door in our eyes and must have despawned as the music stopped before our very ears.

"No-one go outside."

The used-carboard seller and mobile-marriage van driver were no help either. All avenues lead to the same response, but it was 2 in the morning so not too many people were open to us. I made a quip about how vestigial marriage and gender were not needed in this exit-only procreation-impossible virtual world of ours. Only Jessant said how amazing it was.

"That quip was amazing," said Jessant.

She gets me.

We eventua|lly reached Kazatzka Boulevard, the longest road in the city, and also the steamiest with all of the Neo Noir ventilation. We welcome the new | experience with GUSTING | ready excitement. Most shops had closed already due to the time and the times. Karma police had been busy these past years closing down establishments according to the whims of the people - plebiscite law via votes were all that they listened to; votes of the people were the only thing to stop them - except if I begged the Mother Board for power to save the world - redemption for all.

Two gay bars - Exit Night and Enter Light - meaty-sausage-sandwiched a vacant space.

"Why don't we be democratic about this and have a E-vote?" my host asked.

"No!" I shouted. "We must press on. I wish to leave this area at once."

"But how will I sleep? We must pick one of these places."

"Fine. But I wish you'd register my objections and remember them when we wake up in a completely transformed world tomorrow. There are reasons I hate the cities."

We took a nearby vote nearby using a nearby OVC terminal nearby. They typed on the touch-pad to enter both the question 'Enter Night or Exit Light' and the responses 'Enter Night, Exit Light or move on right now.'

I voted for 'move on.' They went with 'Exit Light.' Jessant decided to pick 'Enter Night.' They entered Jessant's result for here. Antonym and Jenny were mysteriously absinthe from the discussion, so they counted as 'invalid vote.'

"A tie?" They slumped infront of the terminal. "What do I do now?"

"You didn't even enter the names of the bars right," Jessant added.

I felt for my host. They were little more than a vehicle for me, but they needed time to prepare for our journey and time to sleep nightly. Time is the one thing we didn't have. Out of pity, I remotely hacked the terminal to create a command for the shackled Process to follow. 'Turn the vacant space between the bars on Kazatzka Boulevard into an expensive, yet tasteful place for a thirty-something to spend their last night.'

"Look," I said, "a new place just opened up across the street."

They got up and gasped. "The 'Happening Bargepole Bed and Breakfast' wasn't there when I last looked."

I promptly turned of the terminal to prevent her from seeing the earlier vote. Insomniacs, light-sleepers and late-night garage workers of the city started having arguments about spelling and city night life. Also, 'move on' had won the vote by 31.4 per cent of the vote. The unasleep masses had chosen me and my ideology over two feircly-competitive businesses, but my host deserved at least one night's rest.

Inside the Happening Bargepole was a reception with black granite features and a fish tank full of tropical fish on the reception desk and towered over the furniture. There was somebody behind it.

"Been working here long?" They asked, keeping their claw behind the rhipidate-shaped desk's haematicly-hued horizontal horizon as if it were suffering from hypsophobia.

The lady behind the tank filed here nails and replied with, "I wasn't here yesterday is that's what's you're query." She chewed gum and blew a bubble. It popped and she added: "What do you want?"

"Bed and breakfast would be nice."

"You're the last person to ask me that. Other guy ran out without paying. Do you have the money up front? That's how I like it."

"No. I thought we paid when we check out." They replied.

"Nobody 'checks out' of this place." she replied.

"Okay, I'm leaving now."

Back outside, Antonym said something revolutionary, "I have money. Lots of it. I'll give you the code if you have a MEM-drive."

Jenny piped up. "What are we waiting for? I've had my eyes on that account for years."

They walked over to the terminal across the street. "So, 'Out of hors d'oeuvres' is a joke right?"

"No," I replied. "Must be a serious problem if even the error is wrong. You see what my Eye() shows you, right?"

"Yeah," said Antonym. "That waterway looked like prime-directive fishing territory. Would have like to fish there with my butler."

"Oh, I hate you," replied Jenny with a human-powered aircraft. "Listen to your imaginary friend. We have treasure to chest."

"Antonym," I started calmly, "we need you to money for us and for your Function I'm extracting, but please obey local fishing laws and not fish in protected areas. You're Reich, but not a God."

"Please," they interviened,"my body, my rules. Thank you for the money, Antonym. Thank you for the company, Jenny. And thank you for not being angry at us, Jess."

"What about me?" I ask.

They took a deep mountain stream of breath. "I have nothing to thank you for. You have ruined my life. I will deal with you in the cold morning of light."

We went for a walk down an alley and up Memory Drive. I was silent.

Memory Drive was a lush, verdant paradise compared to the rest of the places we had been to. The buildings' corners turned at right angles.

The host and our Traces had a conversation this and that. The conversation started light; the conversation became dark. I stayed mostly silent, only speaking when spoken to.

"On, look!" they said shouting, "a place of worship of my choosing."

"No time," I replied, attempting to take over their body in order to move along the money getting.

The resisted. "Not this time. I'm in control."

There're a lot of cats and dogs outside the surrounding area totalitarianly not glitching or dejavuing or anything. Nothing was repeating.

The streets were quiet and no-one was here. There were an unquiet multitude of cats and dogs awaiting the long day's ending. Circling, linear; light, dark; having with the pact, isolated redemption; forever, never. The world was full of conflicts this night. We will be back here later.

Further down the road we could see neon signage, closed curtains and flickering street lamps. Most had notices of murder enquires and unfulfilled promises to repair broken electronics in the area.

A disheviled man was setting up an early morning - very early morning - black market early - stall from the boot of his trunk on the forecourt of a gasoline limerick (We don't have those in the UK, but maybe in the US?). He waved us over but my host payed him no attention.

Reaching the terminal, my human host pulled out a small memory-credit chip with gold tips and uxorious bits. They comely walked past hearses and through herses and past crying execrable homeless people in the street. They walked up to a vacant OVC Terminal and started working the controls. They plugged the console into the credit chip and I half fused with the machine's circuitry while remaining as part of the host so no one would detect this transgressional transaction. Dowdy people gathered around us.

"I don't feel right for doing this," they whisper as to not be heard.

"You need the money more that little-dead-ghost-soul me," Antonym started. "Just use my extremely wealthy bank code 15-22-5-18-18-9-4-5

"Override. A simple sipher," I mad man yelled.

Integrity: compramised.

The chip began sucking and syphoning money from his account. But this is where it got weird. The legal currency tender of this world was memory. That meant that instead of absorbing money onto a disk, it was actually expanding its capacity - erasing old files, destroying rental agreements - and to buy things, you gave up empty blank memory off the stick in exchange for something of 'value,' anything to use up space and void further potential. But this meant that people without possessions - the homeless, the weightless, the scavengers on a bad day - were actually the richest people in existence. They didn't have material things, but were able to trade nothingness and car and lamp-shaped void-holes for cars and lamps because they had empty space to exchange computer processing power for virtual presence. This is what the Hackours desired from the Process. They wanted us to blank out existence for a clean slate - to attain anything they want from the Motherboard below and the Datalines above.

Turning around, all the homeless people were gone.

'Leave Feedback?' the machine asked with words on the screen. 'Thanks x' we feedbacked to the machine.

We went back to A.R.E.A. where the black market dealer working from his car on the poetry square rested.

The host felt pity for him. Pity was felt.

"What are you selling?"

He - not knowing about the pity - woke up startled, snorted loudly and peered up past the peak of his hat. "I needed to free up space. All I had were broken bits the wife destroyed in water damaged."

"I'll take everything you wish to part with." They handed over the MEM-cred card to him.

"You must be the richest miss in all this conversation," he said, taking her card and forcing random broken objects into it. Lamps, synthesises and pets were just two of the things he didn't put in. "Need anything else, miss?"

"No." We turned.

He gotted out his own misery stick and sucked up his car into it. "At last, I can buy me a sandwhich." and brought a sandwich from the lymaricsist.

Fight scene immanent.

I afeared that making our way to the Boulevard from Memory Drive would be difficult. I detected an individual ahead: Bailey Gilande. Her Trace was not actually in the city, it was stored elsewhere and projected here to stop me from reaching my destination.

When we reached the place of worship it was drastically different than last time. A circular arena of graying trees replaced the street corner. The animals were missing and the faulty electrics were being repaired by three-legged Process with. Bailey stood in the middle of the tree circle sipping a glass of wine. They had a bleak visual aura surrounding them.

"It's one of the Traceur." I informed my host. "You will have to fight them and win or they will erase us. Don't worry, they aren't really here. It's just a projection."

"Okay-"

Before my host could give a full reply Baily had used her Get() Function to pull us into the arena.

"Give in." Bailey began. "Do you not wish to return to your life? Do you not have dreams or hopes for the future?"

They looked down at me, the vile claw responsible for yesterdays events. "I would love to return to Cloudbank more than anything. And I will go back there one day, after we accomplish what we need to do."

Bailey finished their glass of wine. "I was once like you, wanting to change the world with accountancy and archiving, acquisition and statistics- my own way. I once, too, lived in Cloudbank. I went to banquets in my honour, but none of that matters now."

I alpha'd negotiations."But isn't that what motivates you? Your past does matter. Well can talk about this."

Bailey threw down the glass and it shattered. "I have a job to do. Please don't take this personally," they omega'd negotiations.

Bailey used Get() to pull us off the ground and threw us onto the ground infront of her. She succeeded to use Get() on the broken glass, embedding most of it into our left shoulder. Some of it missed us and hit her instead.

My host wheezed in pain. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Why leave now?" Bailey asked. "We can provide the best health care around. Just forfeit your friend. Then you can go."

My host didn't say anything to me, they didn't need to. They knew that losing me would mean losing the Traces of my pawns Jenny and Antonym. They meant so much to them even if I couldn't see that yet. I hoped that they would embrace my ideals of rebelling abonst the current system. We needed history and order, elsewise we would circle around and around.

"Do it," they said.

Bailey reached down to force me out but I used Antonym's Function, Short(), to create a short-ranged blast from my eye in the claw to repel her advances.

She outstretched an arm to focus her Functions.

"Turn around I cried."

Lampposts and streetlights were being propelled towards us in quick succession. I used Jessant's antigravity Function, Rush(), to send them gently floating into the sky where they crshed and violently exploded oximoronically into the upsidedown city hanging above overheads.

Bailey rushed towards us, holding one of the repair Process by its head cone which floated about their eye. I saw her from the claw's backhand. She struck my host with one of the Creep Process and they fell down.

"Would this be easier if you had control of my body?" They asked to me.

"Not narcissistically." I replied from me to them.

I processed my hosts forearm slightly more, reaching their elbow and turning her forearm white and elbow deep with circuitry. I used Jenny's Function, Long(), to create a not short-ranged blast from my eye in the claw to knock the droid out of her hands. I probs should )have done it( before she hit me us.

We got up.

"You've acquired some rather convenience abilities there," she snarled.

We faced her.

"What motivates you now?" we began. "Money? Power? Being a miserable nothing in a world full of secrets?"

"I don't want to hurt you," the host added.

"But we will if need be. We can re-shape the world to our desires if we get enough people on our side." I deformed my host

Bailey's fists were firmly clenched by the time we had finished. She stood their, bright red blood on her dark skin, and simple said this: "Limiters."

The Process stopped what they were doing and surround-sounded us. The star-studded line up changed from white with red eyes with gold eyes to black. They started fireing three gravity beams each and this started to apply force to us on all sides. We were being pulled apart by the attacks.

I did the only thing I could. I augmented the Rush() Function with the Short() one and used that combination to lightly lift up all of the Process in the surrounding-short area, ignoring the below lady 'neath us. The gravity beams still acted on us and lifted us up as well, but they struggled to keep us supported and we were suspended below them (like the balloon movie), all their force acting only on our top half which would not cause us to be ripped apart.

I spammed Long() on Bailey while she tried to bring us back down with her Get() spell. The force just wasn't enough to act upon us although it did slow down our ascent as I had previously predicimented.

"What do we do now?" they unpresidented.

"The Mother Board I'm looking for is above the upside-down city," I el presidente-d.

"The one we're hurtleing towards?"

"Yes. That's the one."

Our host had a librarian idea to save us. I would have just let us explode and salvage what I could, but they didn't want to die. They started pulling out random objects out of their money creds. They threw a series of objects to the ground until they found a heavy weight and passed it to the claw. They cashed the cred chip and transfered the weight back to normal hand. I shot with Long() two of the Process. We started to ascend in reverse, a kind of descent back to the ground.

Bailey had her own problems. A man, bumble-bee-suited man, was wrestling with her in hot-argument-ed furry fashion. We landed and blasted the remaining Process. We tried to intervene but it was too late. Bailey grabbed the man from behind.

"To shape the present, and the past," she detonated.

I had no choice but to use Rush() on her and the man. She floated up and exploded in an orange sunset at 4AM. Her virtual presence removed. The body of the man fell down. He was in bad shape - let's just say square-based delta.

They host used the weight to smash the eye on the remaining Process and I manipulated the claw to remove the cores from them. I masticated on them furiously with my hand. We had to make sure humans didn't contact them - even if they were fixing 'lectrics.

Bumble-bee-suited man was badly burnt. His suit was more of a necro-carbon weave than previously. His Trace floated up and spoke.

* * *

End of Chapter() Two.

After uploading this, I've thought about changing the rating for the story from T for Teen to M for whatever M stands for. This is due to upcoming plans for the plot - I'm thinking of adding adult situations and I want to be on the safe side and not get this deleted. We will see when we get there.

See youse in the next update!


	4. Vehicular Chosen One or, The Vegan

This chapter is told once again from the human perspective. It's present tense, like all even chapters are intended to be. I know everyone is looking forward to what the man will say next, but I've read that teasing the reader after a suspenseful event is of import. So you will have to wait a little longer into the chapter to find out.

I had to edit this before uploading to remove the subliminal messaging.

Start of Chapter() Four: Vehicular Chosen One; or, The Vegan

* * *

His Trace floats up. It is blue like all of the others, we are assuming.

The jumbotron[A] displays mouth-wateringly realistic images of various lovely breakfasts from around the multiculture-sphere. I willingly get lost in the advertisement being emitted.

A man brunhildely presents a füll English to the Duchess of Ultima City. It has crisp brown bacon and soft, delicate fried eggs gasping for air under a think orange swamp of tomatoes and beans. A great separate plate offers the Dutchess diagonally cut toast 'neath mushrooms and 60% sausages. Asscher cut black pudding adorns the gilded edges.

"No truffles?" asks the Dutchess. She rooks the aspiring middle classes and returned to her serial.

The man has eiers for ire eyes and leaves the room with waterfalls and unicorns, closing the doors behind him; coffee is a more recent alternative.

Breakfast is important. I will have some when the new day begins, I tell myself.

The trace stops talking.

The thing in my arm blinks at me. "We now have our next objective. Suck him up and let's _bee_ off."

I rush off past the Trace and determinate back to the inn.

Back at the Quen and Crossbow inn, the man who served us last time stands behind the fruit bowl. I slam down my stick and he knows what to do. He places it into the counter's cash register and forces a receipt of the transaction and takes the equivalent empty space from the card.

"Enjoy your stay at the Crossbow and Queen," he no surprises I heard him say. A harpagon that one.

I toilet, I drink from the mini-fridge, I sleep.

I wake up, I toilet, I leave.

A man wearing daffodil blue riding leathers enters the inn.

"Steal the bike," says my artificial friend. "I can hack it and even steer for you."

"Anything for breakfast," reply.

"We shall head for Squallgarden Plaza like the deceased man advised."

"Did he?" asked, getting on the bike and forcing the claw inside the electronics.

"No, the opposite." The bike starts. "The OVC, in their one good deed, sent out OVC-TV evidence of the red-head committing crimes there. He knew we were not her and came looking for us to apologise." We shoot off into the daylight flap.

Out of the window I can see some local youth engagin' in a bit off granny dumping. A bootblack buffs black boots built by a body for somebody's Borommaracha. We have those now after the third electronics skirmish.

We swerve the traffic, pass a whitemarket where hundredths of scavengers gather to buy hollowed out Process for one reason or another, and end at our destination.

The people at the plaza stare at me. Must be because of the claw dangling down my body like pendulous like. I ignore them as I was so determined to get breakfast from one of those hellsapopinish places Jenny met Antonym at - because for two people to invite me over for a visit, they must have found themselves and each other and me.

At this point I remember that, canonically, living humans cannot hear Traces talk, so I didn't need to pretend to listen to an commercial to not hear advice. He was a nurse, dead now. Don't technologically-Bladerunner places always have adverts everywhere?

A man called me over. "You want hotdogs?" he snipes, pointing at hotdogs cooking in his cart fryer.

"No poisen for me, thanks," I gulp.

His girlfriend calls us over non-vocally. "Karafuru comics, miss? Tobiorita manga for your significant husbando-man-about? Second attempt at hottodoggu? I have lovely from my home town omiyage culture. I came to city to learn about multi-cultural regions for my Fathers Origami Shop."

"No shamisen for me, thanks," I reject with politeness.

His girlfriend bows and waves us away.

We eventually fine a black-and-white era diner in the corner of the heptagon. An angry customer is giving heavy metal style arguments to a server man. He Heavy-Metal-Thunder-Storms out of the establishment and I order breakfast from the man. I eat Full English, orange juice and cereal.

"Woah! he exclaims. "You must be a memorillionaire - one who has millions of MEM. Are you the chosen one?"

I hope not and leave. Peoples on the markets' shirts begame to glitch out like artifacting on digital TV. Bleached and gray hawt air ballons descend from the sky - which is above the upsidedown city. It's like the atmosphere from the video game - constantly walking into danger and never truely recovering.

"But on we must march," says my arm.

I try to reach the bike, but I'm too far away.

"What can we do?" I ask. "Those Hackours are back for me."

"No, it's not them. They do not leave artifacts before attacking, they like to ambush in alleys and make walls go wibbly. Those are the Karma Police and I have a solution."

My claw - which I could swear was bigger today - pointed up at the sky, my other arm bracing it. The costumed man from yesterday gave us the Sting() function! We used it to burst the sterile ballons and they crash into the buildings around us.

We re-hack the bike and move at Tr*n-speed down into the vtmb w*mb of the hypogeal underground paths. They shift into traintracks and shopping centres and glass tubes underwater without warning. Staid guys of unspecified gender dressed in suits try to chase us down. Quick-fix items from our open Ava Winters chest spew out everywhere and trip them up.

"We must keep running until we find a sutable place to grind for levelly ups."

"Levelly ups?" I ask.

"Yes. They will unlock new slots for me to use. I can have, at most, 19 Functions loaded at once, but the claw will have to become ENORMOUS for us to do that right now."

The men come back riding Process I've not seen before. They gallop on 2 feet like kangaroos but have large pendulous heads shaped like sq*id beaks dangle over their muscular torsos. Headless chicken types also ran along side, bombing the road ahead.

The men throw out other Process that look like 3-eyed cameras. They float up because I use Long() plus Rush() on them to affect things not close to me. They take picturs of the glass ceiling and that is how feminism began.

Write it down for all the cities to are like the fish we have laws - do not overfish us hashtafOverFish

The man from earlier, wearing bike leaths, rides up beside us and starts using a great big blue sword to topple the Karma Police from the Process. He Jaunt()s with his bike forward and back to crash into the chickens. He takes off his helmet, clutches the sword to his chest and wraps his arms around it, shoulders over and everything. He falls backfards off his bike as it explodes into a road block wall. He rolls over and over, each time emitting colourful bursts of light. It was... Preston Moyle! A nother Traceur person. Not quite here, not quite dead.

The bike hits a creator and I fall off and roll. A bright like also engulphs me. We stop. "I'm going to check is he if Okay, okay?." I say and ask all at once.

"Run from him. He will end our journey here if you confront him. Did you not see his sword? That is the... Transistor"!"

I have no notion of what that is so I rush[B] off t'ward Moyle says my Eye() his name to me.

"Who are the Traceur anyway?" I asks.

"Leaders of the Hackours."

The man isn't moving. "And the Hackours are?"

"The enemy, for now at least."

"Where do the Karma police fit into this? They normally wrongly persicuitally hunt down innocents."

The man adjusts the posisioning of the sword and rolls over slightly. He's live.

"Not sure. Must be a slow day. You know how they are."

I stanza o'er the man. The sword has pierced his chest. "I want to go fast and go far,'. he makes known to me. "Maybe you can live my dream for me?"

He ups himself and adjusts his bowtie, leaving the sword on the ground. He starts to rain. He starts to glitchify the area making huge secretions of area turn greenscreen and walks away.

"Take the sword," my Process friend says. "Take it and take out that man before he comes back for us."

"I'm against killing. They're laws, you know," I retoriced. I pick up the sword with my clawy hand. A pain gushes over me, the pain of hundreds of lives being killed to increase the strength of this grim artifact. The power oozes out and I struggle to leave such a mightly object down.

Three(3) Tracys come floating down from the roof of the tunnel.

"I am hot dog man," introduces hot dog man.

"Seisdon Yamashower," introduces Seisdon Yamashower.

"I sold you brea kfast," says the third.

"Don't go into the Transistor," my Process intermates. "And my claw is not expansive enough for thee more. Better suck them into your storage card. You have plenty of room."

I use my normal unaltered hand to fetch the from mien pockets.

"Get in the stick," arm-it un-soliloquises to the Traces.

They fly in and i pocket it once more.

Horryfying roars emit from the other side of the tunnel. A single chicken Process, a single pendulous kangaroo Process and a lone photo camera Process emerged.

I use some of the hundreds of Functions contained deep in the Transistor seemilngly at random to gran-o-bang them into submission¬ary posision lying on the floor. The château lay abandoned from my eyes.

I drop the Transistor and run towards the injured Process. Their outer facades bubbles away to reveal sheiled cores. I cup one up in my claw and stroke it with my hand.

"Maybe they came to help," I reason to my Process. "Maybe I could have just let them pass through the tunnel without violence."

I try to press the Process inside my palm-0-body . space

"What are you doing, you gardyloo huff-o-human," he asked demandingly.

"You could force your way inside me. Maybe I can have possess a whole armarda of Process."

"You're not ambassadorial enough for that. Stop this at once or there will be consequences."

The cell took to my other hand and a small white claw covered in feathers rippled forth. However, due to unfornforseen-o-consciounquences, an error had occured. The origonal Process' cell had slipt out of my being and had fallen on the ground.

The other two cells burst back into the pendolous kangaroo and le camara droid. They are a shade of pink instead of the usual white ketchup colour. They have lovehearts coming floating up from their red industrious eyes (one each).

The origonal Process bursts out as welll. This is the first time I look at it. It's tall and reptilian like a crocodile standing on two feet. Looking off to the side I could see his long snout of a mouth. It looks down at me and I see it still only has one eye. It has a claw for hair and two more claws for arms.

"You look different than expected."

"Process can change shape as we gain new information through Traces. One spending time with humans become like humans in appearance. I'm still not at that level."

After a few midnights, manic female laughter manifests behind us. I turn to see a red-haired woman walking upsidedown on the ceiling of the tunnel and coming towards us. She jumps down and flips rightsideup, grabs the Transistor with her two white, clawed arms and points it towards us. An area around us becomes a techno-collage wall multi-zone square for neon-battle!

Suddenly, the sandwich man from last night runs down the tunnel in his car. He knocks over the red-head and slows to infront of us. The Process uses his Storage() Fuction to change the camera and squ*d-headed kangaroo back into cell form and swoops in to collect them.

The tunnel flaps about like the inside of a 5p plastic bag caught and Hackours pour out with those artificial men oozing from the floor.

We get inside his car and say "drive!"

I put on my safety-first seat belt and so does Process.

I take out my stick and load the Traces of HotDog, HotDog Girf and Breakfast into my chicken claw. "How long until I can use the Functions?" I ask.

"A few hours with my claw. Who knows with that thing." He fidgets uncomfortably. "We should revert back to how we were. The Hackours will keep searching for us."

"Let them find us. I have a plan to implement."

"You must be careful of that woman," he warns. "She is leader of Traceur, leader of Hackours. Her name is... Cecilia Bellante."

* * *

End of Chapter() Four.

Yes, I know [A]Jumbotron is a trademark but it's a generic one so I can use it as an actual word like ones in the dictionary. It's not advertising, I promise. This is just like ungoogleable.

That [B] is why we have brackets for abilities, to distinguish ourselves from regular verbs.

I think this story is progressing nicely.


End file.
